The Heroes

smoke-smelling darkness of the house, slashes of sunlight through the ill-fitting shutters, across bare boards and bald old furs. Wood creaked under his boots as he strode to his chest, knelt, pushed back the lid, tore his clothes out of the way with small patience. Lifted it with fingers tender as a lover’s. The only thing he cared for.
    Gold glimmered in the gloom and he wrapped his fingers around the hilt, feeling the perfect balance of it, slid a foot-length of steel from the scabbard. Smiled at that sound, that scraping, singing sound that set his already jangling nerves to thrill. How often had he smiled down like this, polishing, sharpening, polishing, dreaming of this day, and now it was come. He slapped the sword back in its sheath, turned … and froze.
    His mother stood in the doorway, watching. A black shadow with the white sky behind.
    ‘I’m taking my father’s sword,’ he snapped, shaking the hilt at her.
    ‘He was killed with that sword.’
    ‘It’s mine to take!’
    ‘It is.’
    ‘You can’t make me stay here no more.’ He stuffed a few things in the pack he kept ready. ‘You said this summer!’
    ‘I did.’
    ‘You can’t stop me going!’
    ‘Do you see me trying?’
    ‘By my age Shubal the Wheel had been seven years on campaign!’
    ‘Lucky him.’
    ‘It’s time. It’s past time!’
    ‘I know.’ She watched as he took his bow down, unstrung and wrapped up with a few shafts. ‘It’ll be cold nights, next month or two. Best take my good cloak with you.’
    That caught him off guard. ‘I … no, you should keep it.’
    ‘I’d be happier knowing you had it.’
    He didn’t want to argue in case he lost his nerve. Off all big and bold to face down a thousand thousand Southerners but scared of the one woman who’d birthed him. So he snatched her good green-dyed cloak down from the peg and over his shoulder as he stalked for the door. Treated it like nothing even though he knew it was the best thing she had.
    Festen was standing outside, nervous, not really understanding what was happening. Beck ruffled his red hair for him. ‘You’re the man here, now. Get them logs chopped and I’ll bring you something back from the wars.’
    ‘They’ve got nothing there we need,’ said his mother, eyeing him fromthe shadows. Not angry, like she used to be. Just sad. He’d hardly realised ’til that moment how much bigger’n her he was now. The top of her head hardly came up to his neck, even.
    ‘We’ll see.’ He took the two steps down to the ground outside, under the mossy eaves of the house, couldn’t help turning back. ‘Well, then.’
    ‘One last thing, Beck.’ She leaned down, and kissed him on his forehead. The softest of kisses, gentle as the rain. She touched his cheek, and she smiled. ‘My son.’
    He felt the tightness of tears in his throat, and he was guilty for what he’d said, and joyful to get his way at last, and angry for all the months he hadn’t, and sad to go, and afraid, and excited all at once. He could hardly make his face show one thing or another for all the different ways it was pulled. He touched the back of her hand quickly, and he turned before he started weeping and strode away down the path, and off to war.
    Strode the way he thought his father might’ve.
    The weapontake weren’t quite what Beck had hoped for.
    Rain flitted down, not enough to make anyone wet, really, but enough to make everyone squint and hunch, to damp down the feel of the whole business. And the feel was pretty damn soggy already. Folk who’d come to join up, or been made to come, more likely, stood in things that might’ve started off as rows but had melted into squelching, jostling, grumbling tangles. Most of ’em were young lads, too young for this by Beck’s reckoning. Lads who might never have seen the next valley let alone a battle. Most of the rest were grey with age. A few cripples of one kind or another rounded out the numbers. At the edge of the crowd some of Reachey’s Carls stood leaning on spears or sat mounted, looking every bit as unimpressed by the new recruits as Beck was. All in all, it was a long, low way from the noble band of brothers he’d been hoping to play a hero’s part in.
    He shook his head, one fist holding his mother’s cloak tight at his neck, the other underneath it, gripping the warm hilt of his father’s sword. He didn’t belong with this lot. Maybe Skarling Hoodless had started out with an unpromising crowd, and made an